North Carolina’s election began on September 4, with county boards of elections distributing absentee ballots and accepting voted ballots online from military and overseas voters. County boards accepted ten ballots that same day.
With that start, we will also start a weekly review of election data.
North Carolina has the longest absentee ballot voting period by far
North Carolina started accepting absentee ballots on September 4, 60 days before election day, and continues accepting them through election day (county boards of election continue to accept military and overseas ballots for 10 days after election day).
As seen in the chart below from the Center for Election Innovation and Research, that is long before any other state. The next-earliest state, Wisconsin, does not begin mailing absentee ballots until September 17, 47 days before the election. Even Washington, which accepts ballots until 20 days after election day, only has a 39-day absentee voting period.
On the day ballots went out, 10 ballots came in through email, online, or (unlikely) fax. Military and overseas voters may submit ballots online. The system is designed for those military and overseas voters who cannot get regular absentee ballots delivered on time. The figure below shows the distribution of those ballots by county of registration. The ballots came from the United Kingdom, Belgium, Mexico, Spain, Bahrain, Ireland, France, Canada (2), and the USA.
Early voting starts on Thursday, October 17. Election day is on November 3.
Absentee ballot requests lag behind 2022
The State Board of Elections reports that county boards have received 49,126 absentee ballot requests through September 5. That is down from 64,936 requests at the same point in 2022.
As seen in the chart below, Republicans account for a larger share of absentee ballot requests than they did at a comparable point in 2022.
I would not read too much into that, however. Voters in 2022 were still voting based on the habits they had acquired during the COVID panic of 2020. Democratic voters disproportionately voted by mail that year. Just as 2024 was a return to normal on absentee voting, I suspect that 2026 is as well.
Both parties lag in voter registrations, but Republicans lag more
I compare voter registration numbers starting 15 weeks before the election to a comparable period in 2018, the previous Trump midterm election. The results through September 5 are in the chart below:
While unaffiliated registrations are running ahead of the 2018 pace, both Democrats and Republicans are doing worse than they did eight years ago. Democrats have only added 3,257 registrations, well behind the 5,388 they added in 2018. Republicans performed even worse, adding only 1,610 registrations, compared to 5,928 in 2018.
(I considered including 2022 data, but it would have made the chart too cluttered.)
I will post election data every Monday until election day, although the posts might be short until early voting starts.
